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WikiLeaks to drop another bombshell

Dylan Welch

WIKILEAKS has revealed plans to publish a new tranche of secrets, this one seven times larger than last month's massive 400,000 military reports about the Iraq war.

The announcement comes days after Swedish authorities issued an arrest warrant for the organisation's editor, the Australian citizen Julian Assange, following a two month investigation into allegations of rape.

WikiLeaks announced on Twitter yesterday afternoon: ''Next release is 7x the size of the Iraq War Logs. Intense pressure over it for months.''

It has published two massive tranches of secret US military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - 77,000 files on Afghanistan in July, and 400,000 files on Iraq last month. It has not discussed where the material came from. But US authorities have charged a soldier, intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, over the thefts.

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Mr Assange has been in England since leaving Sweden in August after publicity surrounding the allegations made by the two women.

Both had separate and brief sexual liaisons with the WikiLeaks editor while he was there, and both allege they had consensual sex with him, but that he refused to wear a condom.

Mr Assange and his supporters have alleged he is the victim of a US-initiated smear campaign as a result of his work.

''I request the District Court of Stockholm to detain Mr Assange in his absence, suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion,'' the Swedish Director of Prosecutions, Marianne Ny, said last week.

In a statement the same day Mr Assange's London lawyer, Mark Stephens, said the allegations were ''false and without basis''. He also said Mr Assange has repeatedly offered to be interviewed.

''All of these offers have been flatly refused by a prosecutor who is abusing her powers by insisting that he return to Sweden at his own expense to be subjected to another media circus that she will orchestrate.''